Mavi Marmara

Third Party Monitoring Team releases its third annual report

The independent committee of peace monitors which is set up by 2012 Framework Agreement and 2014 Comprehensive Agreement between the Philippines government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front released its third annual report in a press meeting.

The independent committee of peace monitors which is set up by 2012 Framework Agreement and 2014 Comprehensive Agreement between the Philippines government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front released its third annual report in a press meeting.

The committee consists of five members who are former EU Ambassador Alistair MacDonald, Huseyin Oruc from IHH, Steven Rood from Asia Foundation, Karen Tanyada from Gaston Z Ortigas and Priest Kuthdo from UNYPAD.

The report evaluates whatever happened in the peace process over the past year. It states that the peace process is stagnated as the bill on the enforcement of the signed agreements did not pass in the parliament.

However the Philippines government and MILF are resolute about continuing on the peace path which leads people to lay their hopes on the next cabinet.

The monitoring committee highlighted that not just Mindanao but the whole country needs the peace process to move forward regardless of who wins the elections which will be held in May.

The committee member Huseyin Oruc from IHH has asserted that war is the easy way to choose while the peace is the hardest; we have seen first-hand the painful cost of war in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Palestine, Iraq and lately in Syria, he said. It is crucial for the future president to initiate implementation of 2014 Comprehensive Agreement in order to bring the country toward peace and not toward war, he remarked.

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